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Brother-in-law brought an animated cartoon
It is better watched than told, I know; still..
The joke was on me and to my ill-concealed delight..
Of a fraggle-like child-character calling your name incessantly
Until a yell hollers in threatening response and it flees,
In relief overwhelmed by humiliated annoyance.

Countless are the times since; I have called
In empty cartoon clouds laden with unheard sound
Not daring to give them voice until I hearken
The affirmation of an echoing shout.
If silent it must be; we will be silent together.

Ah! Now, here come the walls. Swift sliding woosh-es past the silence.
Building compartments in practised haste
I survive because of these walls.
Some don’t have them that strong it seems
A fashion designer. A singer’s husband too.
Were theirs filigreed frames? Perhaps they had none.
Mine are fortressed over years; Brick by brick.
My sturdy stockades bolt down like granite
I can do nothing but wait inside them.

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Doordarshan Bharati is India’s PBS. Only, a more fusty version that continues to have a dedicated viewership due to the nonpareil content of its archives. It is a veritable Geniza of everything Indian – culture, language, music, arts and literature. The words, India and Indian, mean many things to each of us and the diverse experience and interpretation of Indian-ness seems to grow exponentially each year. Much has changed in the past decade; enough to feel a generational divide with those a mere ten years younger than us. Their experience and obsession with consumerism is one that my generation did not have and in any case, could not afford.

I am from the Southern part of India; a region distinctly different from the North, in both attitude and approach to life and living. In my time, those that could afford more than most were subdued and restrained with their wealth. Conspicuous consumption was frowned on. Severely. The appurtenance of wealth was seen, in maybe a big house (often with the same interiors as your own; only bigger spaces) or a car; but personal display was almost non-existent. All retired grandfathers wore veshtis and shirts. All mothers and grandmothers wore demure, mostly cotton, saris with red pottus and flower strands in their hair for adornment. All ate with their hands. There was a homogenizing sameness of lifestyle that transcended money. Not much distinguished a rich girl from a poor one in dress, food, habit or lifestyle. At the most, one had short hair and the other had a plait. And then she was called, ‘modern’, not rich. One wore maybe a city styled ‘fancy’ chappal; the other had Bata. When I was growing up, all kids, rich or poor, wore Bata chappals. That’s it. I only woke, with wide eyed astonishment, to the realization that there was something called ‘party shoes’ in my twenties. Indeed, it happened with the excruciating embarrassment of the universally experienced rite of passage; and yes, in an alien culture. ‘Children’ have party shoes today!! I am not a curmudgeon dinosaur (despite a sincere effort to have portrayed myself thus), but in my world, children do not need and, will never need party shoes!

Consumerism is not always a bad thing. It is a necessary driver of the economy; but, our children must be protected from its corrosive power. There is an age which indulges in it (and should); there is an age that retracts and detaches from it and there is an age that should not know it at all. It is hard to instill values of empathy, equality and sharing in children when materialism is competing for mind and heart space. This age is better served by intellectual consumption than by material consumerism. When these foundations are firmly in place; we build a citizenry of integrity who, while not shunning the consumerist experience, will be well schooled in not falling under its rapacious influence either. The ugly sights of a spurious entitlement, visible all around us today, might finally fade and die. And wealth might cease to be the sole arbiter of justice.

For those like me, whose days are filled with a perpetual nostalgia for a culture, past and with a shrinking horror of the new; Doordarshan is a reassuring balm. At the end of a working day in India when body returns home with a numbed mind; nerves on edge and crumpled souls sink into the pillowed comfort of its quiet monotone narration, its languid landscapes, sublime, identifiable music and richly illustrated documentaries of our history and traditions. In the rapidly alienating environment of modern India that questions the roots of our belonging; it is Doordarshan that reminds us each time that we are indeed, home.

I wrote this, in some agitation, after listening to a stirring poem by Gurudev, that was sung by Sasha Ghoshal as the title song of a documentary on Indian Nobels aired on Doordarshan. It left me with a profound sense of loss and a helplessness that is hard to explain in words. I dearly wish for you, my dear reader, to listen to it. The translation, from the Bengali, is copied below. This was the caliber of the people that made and shaped our identities. Remembering them, their lives, their words – how can we not mandate that as a daily exercise for ourselves and for our children? Do the young watch Doordarshan, anymore?